Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, following a recent financial briefing, engaged in a prolonged Q&A with curious attendees. Spotted over at IGN, the full Q&A reveals Iwata’s thoughts and predictions for a number of crucial Nintendo issues.
Of primary concern to the hardcore among us is the topic of the Wii’s limited storage — something that’s speculated to become a much bigger issue when WiiWare launches later this month. Iwata’s remarks were a fairly vague, noncommittal we’re-working-on-it response. The pleasing part is that Iwata acknowledged that players who experience the memory problems are the ones who are necessarily playing the most, and he’d like to make sure they’re taken care of. From there, Iwata delivered some very candid remarks about Nintendo and its future.
Now that Brawl and Mario Kart are out, has Nintendo got anything big on the horizon?
Of course, we are preparing for a variety of software for the latter half of this year. However, we are now feeling that the speed at which new information is consumed and made obsolete has become quicker than ever. When I think of today’s situation as a consumer, when I am exposed to new information too early on, I find that I am already tired of it when the product is launched. This is one of the reasons why we would like to keep news at bay until we really have to disclose them.
Will games be hurt by the slipping U.S. economy?
Based on our experiences, our business has not been largely affected by the ups and downs of economic climate. For example, people may say, “because the economy is bad, I should refrain from big purchases for now,” “we should forget about travel this year,” or “we will eat at home rather than dining out,” but they hardly say, “we should cut back on spending on gaming.” Rather, they may have opted for video games as a cheaper alternative. It is only our feeling, but it appears historically that our sales have hardly been affected by economic conditions. … While I assume that many other indexes in other industries in the U.S. for the same time period show downward trends, video games might have been an exception. Therefore, I feel that there will be small direct impact on video games’ sales, if any, of the U.S. recession, which was triggered by sub-prime loans. We are receiving weekly sales reports from the U.S. and Europe, but so far, there has been no sign of slow down for our sales.
On Virtual Console and WiiWare:
For your information, the business relationships between us and software manufacturers for Virtual Console and WiiWare are very different. As for Virtual Console, Nintendo manages the process to make third party software ready for the download sales at Nintendo’s own business risks. This is because when we started the service, the future prospect of download sales on Wii hardware was totally unknown. Since Nintendo is shouldering a large portion of the business risks, we are also receiving proportionally larger margins.
In case of WiiWare, all the development risks are absorbed by our software manufacturers. They shoulder the development risks for themselves, they submit the software to the rating board for the appropriate rating to be determined, and they handle their marketing. Accordingly, the software makers’ margins are bigger. We are not in a position to disclose the margins as part of the contracts, but I just wanted to bring up this clear difference between Virtual Console and WiiWare.
And how about rumors that Microsoft is making a motion-based controller?
All I can say today is, it is not that easy to develop software which leverages the characteristics of Wii Remote. We are not concerned about what other companies may do but rather more concerned with presenting them with new ideas to our customers based on the prospect that our existing customers will surely get tired of the plays enabled by Wii Remote if we do not try to improve the experience. In other words, what matters to us is whether or not we can continue to constantly create and offer new surprises one after another. If we can, then (other company’s attempt to launch Wii Remote-like controller) should not be a big threat.
Refreshing stuff. Go check out the full Q&A here, if for no other reason than to see the adorable icon at the top of Mario in a business suit.
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